They almost slept through the whole thing. Peter, James and John had been invited by Jesus to climb a mountain where Jesus could find quiet-stillness to pray. He knew what they didn't, that the future was not going to be filled with many more intimate days of prayer and service. Jesus also knew that he would take them down off this mountain onto the FIRST that would become known as, a Lenten journey towards Jerusalem. Jesus knew that both the religious and the political authorities were threatened by his ministry, so things were not going to go well in the city where the Temple stood, and where Roman soldiers served as local police. Today, however, what he needed was to pray, and so he did.

As Jesus prayed, Peter, James and John saw that "the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white." Not just that, but "suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem." Moses - who had brought down the tablets of the law from another cloud on another mountain - and Elijah - the prophet whom observant Jews expected to reappear as a harbinger of the arrival of the messiah. Then a voice from heaven declares, "This is my Son...my Chosen." And it's obviously meant for Peter, James and John, because the voice concludes by saying, "Listen to him." Now I don't know about you, but I would have been rattled. And it appears that Peter, James and John were as well, for Luke ends his story by saying, "they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen."

The Transfiguration is what we call it, when for a moment the intimacy of Jesus' relationship with his heavenly father got laid bare. Herbert O'Driscoll, an Anglican preacher who frequently teaches at the Cathedral College, challenges us to make this story our own when he asks: "What moments of transfiguration can we ourselves claim or expect? In what direction lies our particular mountain where we may experience the presence of God?" To this there is no answer, but I will attempt an insight that seems true to me. I suspect that most of us glimpse spiritual heights, not because we ourselves have climbed them but because, in the beauty and sanctity of someone's life, we have glimpsed a peak high above the lower slopes where we do most of our own journeying."

The Transfiguration is our story, too, not because we are special or because we at St. Thomas' have scaled spiritual heights unavailable to others. The Transfiguration is our story because it reminds us that, if we have stayed awake to notice, in the beauty and sanctity of someone else's life each of us have had the opportunity to glimpse, as O'Driscoll puts it, "a peak high above the lower slopes where we do most of our own journeying."